United States President Joe Biden has reportedly come out in favor of measures to ban members of Congress from trading stocks while in office.
According to a Dec. 17 Associated Press report, President Biden gave an interview that will be released in the next five days by the labor advocacy group A More Perfect Union. The US President reportedly told journalists that “nobody in the Congress should be able to make money in the stock market while they’re in the Congress.”
President Biden had largely not commented on legislation aimed at curbing or stopping members of Congress from holding or trading stocks. Proposed laws have received bipartisan support in previous sessions of Congress.
In July, lawmakers in the House of Representatives and Senate supported an agreement to stop the President, Vice President, and members of Congress from trading or selling “securities, commodities, futures, options, trusts, and other comparable holdings.”
The proposed trading ban could also extend to buying and selling cryptocurrencies, which many members of Congress have reported holding as part of disclosure requirements under the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act, passed in 2012.
According to the AP, President Biden said he lived on his Senate salary when he represented Delaware in Congress from 1973 to 2009, not trading on the stock market. The US President has largely not spoken about crypto while in office but introduced an executive order to establish a regulatory framework for digital assets in 2022.
Potential conflicts of interest?
President-elect Donald Trump holds tens of millions of dollars worth of crypto in his personal wallets and presumably has access to more through his decentralized finance World Liberty Financial project. Georgia Representative Mike Collins has reported investments in Ether (ETH) and altcoins, while Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis disclosed holding Bitcoin while in office.
Given that many in the crypto industry supported Trump and other lawmakers in the 2024 election, some experts have pointed out that the president-elect and members of Congress could have potential conflicts of interest if their priorities in office favor their own wallets and listening to backers rather than the rest of the American people. Trump has not said he will divest from his businesses before he is sworn in on Jan. 20.
The president-elect already said he would appoint an “AI and crypto czar” and allowed Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to move forward with plans for an advisory commission on government efficiency named after the meme token Dogecoin (DOGE).
Senator Lummis, who has previously disclosed BTC holdings, has proposed legislation for the US to “build a strategic Bitcoin reserve” — a move that many experts say could cause the price of the cryptocurrency to surge.
The report did not suggest whether President Biden would support banning stock trading for the nine justices of the US Supreme Court. The justices are currently allowed to trade stocks but risk the appearance of impropriety if they do not recuse themselves from cases with potential conflicts of interest.
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